Archive for the 'Rioting' Category

As thousands in Spain and Greece take to the streets this week to protest the European Union’s (EU) austerity plan (i.e. Germany’s plan), jittery stock markets in the United States and around the world tumbled. Two nations openly revolting are the tip of a growing European iceberg that nations there want austerity to end!

Extinction Protocol claims: “European shares and the euro fell sharply, as developments in Greece and Spain sent a new wave of anxiety through the ranks of international investors. National indexes were also down by between 1 percent and 3 percent. The euro was at $1.2865, down from $1.2950.”

More than 1,000 riot police confronted protesters in Greece where one protester told Reuters News Service: “For the past two-to-three years we’ve been living an incredible social catastrophe. My salary has been cut by 50 percent. I have two children and tomorrow I don’t know if I’ll have a job.”

Also, Dina Kokou, a 54-year-old teacher, with four children cried: “We can’t take it anymore – we are bleeding. We can’t raise our children like this.”

Demonstrations began as some 70,000 people marched up to the Greek parliament loudly shouting “EU, IMF Out!” against the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The New York Times writes that as politicians in Greece prepare to negotiate a new round of cuts to placate their creditors, strikers shut down: shipping ports, museums, air ports and trains, schools, shops and hospitals, etc. All because strikers feel betrayed by the new coalition government that took power in June.

A Reuters report from Spain says: “Evictions have also skyrocketed across Spain as thousands have failed to repay bank loans. . . protesters were enraged that the government was making cuts to health, education and public sector salaries while pumping funds into the country’s ailing banking sector to keep it afloat.”

Reuters also relates: “The Bank of Spain said Wednesday that the country, where one in four faces unemployment, is in the grips of a deep depression. . . . violent protest led to 38 arrests and 64 injuries, including 8 police officers.” Growing tensions arise as the government prepares more austerity measures.

Amid the turmoil, politicians in Spain’s historically autonomous region of Catalonia now threatens to secede, but Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy still resists losing his nation’s sovereignty by asking EU banks for a bailout.

Nations falling into chaos––after EU leaders told the world that problems were solved––forebodes the civil wars and deceptions needed to set World War III afire––just as Germany seems to want.

These are among the many kinds of wars in wholesale Christian Bibles that The LORD Jesus warns are signs of the end times: “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars . . . but the end is not yet. (Matthew 24: 6).” So get ready!

In much larger demonstrations in Madrid and 80 other cities in Spain against the government’s new austerity plan, civil servants, trade unionists, policemen, firemen, Civil Guards, miners, farmers, and other workers have enlarged daily demonstrations against the Prime Minister’s latest budget-cutting actions.

Many unemployed workers are walking hundreds of miles to join in these protests against the 65 billion euros of new spending cuts––including cuts in unemployment benefits, public sector wage cuts and sales tax increases to 21%––that Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced last week.

Reuters reports that demonstrators in Madrid set garbage cans on fire as riot police fired rubber bullets against them. Police claim that six marchers were injured, and seven others were arrested.

In ‘Spain Police Clash with Austerity Protesters,’ aljazeera.com com writes: “Thick smoke hung in the air early on Friday from plastic bins set alight by protestors chased by police, who hit them with batons when some tried to reach the heavily-guarded parliament at the end of a mostly peaceful march.

“Hundreds of protesters, including fire-fighters wearing their helmets and police in black T-shirts, have marched through the streets of Madrid, blocking traffic and chanting.”

An auditor in the treasury, told Clare Kane and Feliciano Tisera of Reuters: “We have to make some noise, because they’re making fun of us and of all working people.” Others sang “We’ve had it up to here,” and shouted “robbery.”

“We have lived through bad times, but this takes the biscuit,” fireman Francisco Vaquero, 58. Another worker, Ines Corned, 44, said: ” They have already lowered and frozen our salary and this is the final blow.”

Ramon Pacheco, politics professor, told Kane and Tisera that there is widespread anger in Spain over the cuts: “It has gone beyond an ideological issue . . . and it’s moved beyond the traditional groups that demonstrate. We have seen even the military threatening a demonstration.”

Critics argue the new austerity laws will worsen economic conditions for ordinary people, while doing nothing to affect companies and high income earners.

Spain’s parliament pushed through those budget cuts at the end of last week, and in turn Germany’s parliament voted to give Spain a 100 billion euro bailout. The fourth largest economy in the euro-zone, Spain is also the fourth country in the zone to get bailout financing, after Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Politicians everywhere should check with God’s Word which promises: “He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, and he that giveth to the rich, shall surely come to want (Proverbs 22: 16).” Perhaps marchers should put that on plus size Christian T-Shirts to remind leaders that God keeps His Word.

The riots in London, stock market fluctuations and the media’s assault on Global Warming––all make clear that a two-tier attention span radiates in the Western world and beyond. National political and economic leaders, and the media outlets they generally control, insist upon running the world as though what the few of them want is alone important, that they alone know what is best for the “general” good, and that what they deem important is all that really matters––when in fact the opposite may well be true.

One of the rioters in London remarked to a news reporter to the effect: “Last week over two thousand of us marched in protest over our pitiful poverty, lack of jobs, and no hope for the future, and the media completely ignored our peaceful march. But I bet you hear us now, don’t you?” Why, as London’s media explodes with news over the fall of a newspaper baron, would the same media ignore a march of two thousand people? Media moguls ignore such events because: 1) They hope to contain such protests to keep them from spreading; 2) They consider them insignificant in light of other events, such as stock market ups and downs; 3) They do what those in political and financial power want them to do.

As Britain’s conservative government imposed new austerity measures in order to please financial analysis like Standard and Poor’s, it did so without regard for the millions of people who would be adversely affected. As Nina Power of the Guardian explains? “The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper.” And now that the rioters have gotten the attention of the media and the world, the British Prime Minister threatens to cut off the internet’s social networks which seems to have allowed rioters to communicate.

The same social unrest has swept across the Middle East where, despite their control of military and police forces, ruling families fall, as though societal foundations were crumbling away. In Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, the internet has also been the people’s way of communicating what is important to them. And urgent to people everywhere are the dreadful affects of Global Warming. How much longer can governments and media expect to minimize the truth about Global Warming? How much longer can they refuse to publicly connect the dots between extreme weather patterns, drought, famine, high human mortality rates, animal extinctions, melting ice poles, rising sea levels, etc.

One of the most famous Bible prophecies is: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee . . .” (Hosea 4: 6a). In other words, they didn’t know because they didn’t want to know. And today, media and world leaders do not want to know about Global Warming. Like the London riots, such feigned ignorance only leads to destruction!